Magic Giant

The band almost never happened. Sometimes blockbusters don’t get made or the next great American novel dies on the writer’s shelf. Fortunately, the story of MAGIC GIANT is one the public will have the chance to know.

What is now a folk revival band with euphoric hooks, a dozen rotating instruments and even some choreography, was first imagined in 2012 when lead singer, Austin Bisnow, made the New Years resolution to follow his childhood dream and put a band together. Naive and new to LA, he asked around if anyone knew someone who could play banjo, fiddle, and sing harmonies and he was quickly introduced to Zambricki, a recent Nashville transplant. What he did not know, was Zambricki had made that same resolution on that same New Years Eve. And so it began. They played a handful of local shows, had their fair share of good times, and like most endeavors, fizzled out. Cue the violins… another band bites the dust.

The tale could have easily ended there, but sometimes in life you get a second chance, and as fate would have it, six months later, the phone rang. It was the talent-buyer from the Sweetlife Music Festival (Phoenix, Avicii, The Strokes) who had seen one of those rare, early performances and was intrigued. Unaware of this passion project hiatus, he attempted to book them, setting off a chain of events, that began with “We’re gettin’ the band back together!” Being in the unique situation to showcase a lost project in front of thousands was too hard to resist and so the experimentation began. After one taste of what tour-life and playing under the Sun had to offer, combined with a thunderous response from an enlivened crowd of Washingtonians, the crew parlayed one festival into two, landing a slot at the inaugural Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas.

But the musicians were not quite ready to cease tweaking their sound. They started weaving mandolins with live horns and drum machines, and added a crucial piece to the puzzle: Brian Zaghi on upright bass and guitar, who grabbed their attention when Austin stumbled upon an iPhone video of the salsa dancing prodigy. Together they formed the energizing band you see today, hitting capacity with a line down the block of folks turned away at their first show, March 26, 2014, as the newly minted MAGIC GIANT. And so they were off to the races. They decided not leave history up to chance, but to give it everything they have, self-producing their debut EP, and touring it around North America.